[  Mood: Confused ]
[  Currently: Working in a coal mine. ]

So I’ve been doing some research into financing models for web based businesses. How much to spend advertising and where, whether to start with my own domain, when to start offering self referential t-shirts, how to build a fanbase, etc. It’s been a heckuva ride, and it seems like its 20% good comic, 50% good website layout, and 30% persistence. You’d think the persistence thing would be a more pressing matter, but nope. Artists seem to take weeks off at a time with no real negative impact on their business. Meanwhile, there’s a lot of people that have webcomics that people just have never heard of, and never will. I think the key is in getting decent web banners on major websites. For example,

Questionable Content is my favorite offender regarding the self referential t-shirt thing. It’s like Jeph Jaques draws his characters with the t-shirts he offers in the store as a way to help push them. Oh, wait, that’s exactly what he does. While a lot of his designs are bizarre yet unfunny, there are a few gems that bid a hearty "Wtf?" that I myself am tempted to purchase. The Indiana Jones as God shirt is particularly appealing, and I’d crap from laughing just looking at this poster while sitting across from my toilet:

For all of his painfully slow exposition and formulaic strips week after week, I have to say that I am impressed by a lot about Questionable Content and how it evolved over the years. Just looking at the first strip versus the latest strip, and you can really see how well the art improved. And the story moved forward after stagnating for about a year – the guy really found his groove, which is good, because on top of being talented, the guy uses his web comic to share indie music tips. I never would have known about Stephen Malkmus or Banshee Beat if it weren’t for the several days I spent filing through QC.

Hanyway, I got my scanner back today, so I should be able to start uploading images and inking them in photoshop. Or yes, Inkscape. I think Inkscape and Photoshop are mostly going to be a background thing, I’m really having fun defining exactly what parts of a sketch I want to keep by keeping everything in pen. A lot goes wrong with that, but, this is how the west was won or some other excuse to avoid technology that would make my life easier.